Search form

What Do You Do When You See People Treated Unfairly?

I’ve always admired Bob. When he sees people treated unfairly at work, he speaks up. Recognizing an unjust policy, he works to reform it. Yet Bob’s behavior is rare. Most people live with what Thoreau called “quiet desperation” (1999).They either complain in the hallways and do nothing or ignore the issue as long as it doesn’t affect them personally.

What makes the difference? Moral courage—the ability to confront abuse and injustice, risking our own well-being to affirm our deepest values and the rights of others.

Without moral courage there would be no social progress, only a chilling climate of fear and learned helplessness.

It takes courage to disagree, to stand out from the crowd. As Asch’s classic (1956) experiments on conformity reveal, only a small percentage of people will resist peer pressure to publically disagree. How comfortable are you disagreeing with the status quo or pointing out problems in your workplace?

Moral courage involves compassion, concern for the lives of others. In their study of people who rescued Jews during the Holocaust, Fagin-Jones and Midlarsky (2007) found that the rescuers were more than three standard deviations above bystanders in empathic concern, social responsibility, and altruistic moral reasoning. But research has also shown that concern for others can be undermined by an atmosphere of chronic stress. People can become too busy, too rushed, too overwhelmed, to care (Darley & Batson, 1973). Have you ever found yourself too busy with demands and deadlines to respond to the needs of someone you know?

Yet research has shown that people with moral courage have greater self-efficacy, which contributes to greater emotional and physical health (Bandura, 1997, 1999). And acts of moral courage can produce a ripple effect, transforming the people and conditions around us. Haidt (2000) has found that the elevation we experience when witnessing acts of moral courage makes us want to help others and become better people ourselves.

Do you know someone with moral courage? If you do, what difference does it make in your life?

References

Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs, 70.